How to Set Boundaries for Your Child’s Screen Time
As a parent dealing with too much cooped-up time at home in a pandemic, I completely get how we, as parents would succumb to the use of screen times just to keep our sanity’s sake. Or to simply serve as a means to entertain our kids while we tend to our own matters.
Whatever the reason we may have, and you desire to set up some boundaries in place when it comes to screen time or to altogether reduce the tantrums when it comes to removing screentime at home, here are some mindful tips for you dear parents.
Let’s dive in.
1. Ease screentime into a routine.
For babies and toddlers (even for us adults), we decrease the chances of them being upset about the removal (or decrease) of screen times if they know what to expect. Let them know when they can have screen times, and how long can they have it. Give them a heads up as well before the actual end of screen time to further prep them.
This is entirely up to you and your family’s situation of course, but important here is to let your children know beforehand about this additional step in their daily routine. If your child has been so used to unlimited screen time use already, allow them to be upset about the changes, but gently and firmly hold your boundary.
In case you’re struggling with how to handle the tantrums of your child, you can read about my blog post for some tips on that matter here.
2. List down alternative ways to engage your kids’ attention.
For those whose kids are begging for screen time, or pestering you that they’re bored (and the old spiel of ‘it’s okay to be bored’ isn’t working), whip out your special list of activities to otherwise engage your child’s attention. And one way to truly inspire this? Activate the two most sensitive periods they have for the 0-6-year-old, which are movement and language.
Curate your sensory play ideas, go out to nature, create an obstacle course, read books, have an intense karaoke session (even if it’s to Cocomelon) by playing music through the speaker, initiate a dance par-tay. If you’re truly at a loss for activity ideas, I highly recommend Susie’s @busytoddler blog account. Her activity ideas are gold and worth the read.
3. Create your very own special engagement box/bag (SEB).
While enforcing your newly established rules of screen times, the best way to ease into the transition is to distract your child and to draw their attention to other activities sans the screen time. Another way to engage our child’s attention when you didn’t have the time to purposefully and mindfully rotate their toys on their shelf is to have a special engagement box/bag.
It’s just literally a box/bag (no need to be such a fancy one) that you bring out ONLY when you’re in a bind and the toys you bought your kid are not engaging them enough. Whip out a special engagement box (SEB) by throwing in some random regular household materials that they don’t get to interact with daily. It’s essentially a toned-down ‘treasure basket’ that they get to explore.
4. Set up a playpen/area for concentrated work.
Another reason we give in to screen times is that we, as parents, have thousands of things to do like maintaining the house or dealing with urgent work deadlines. We may not have the time or inclination to purposefully attend to our children at these times or to constantly watch them and make sure they don’t get into trouble.
One tip is to build up the skill of independent play to your child early on and setting up a confined area dedicated to concentrated work where you’re confident to leave them to their devices. Especially for quick but urgent matters, you can leave your kid there with a SEB, and gradually increase the time increments you let them spend there.
5. Be the model of the boundaries.
It’s important to note here that when we want to reduce the use of screen times with our kids, we have to be the actual models here. When we’re with our kids, let us be the ones to put down our phones first (except of course when we’re attending to urgent matters), keep our full attention to them, and observe and play with them.
Let us uphold our own rules of screen-free zones at home, take breaks from our devices, and find our own screen-free activities as adults. Sometimes, the reason why our kids are constantly begging to have screen times is simply that they see us constantly glued to our own little screens.
There you have it, dear parents. My five tips on how to set limits for screen times. It has been long established by research how screen time is absolutely discouraged as much as possible to children aged 2 and below.
No judgments for those who subscribe to more screen times, though. But if you’re in that boat where you’re looking for ways to reduce the screen times at home, I hope this post helped you in some ways. Comment down below on other ways for you to set the boundaries for your little ones! We could surely use some of your tips. 🙂
Cheering for you in your parenting journey, as always! You got this mamas and dadas!
